Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 16th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Welcome to meeting number 51 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room as well as remotely using the Zoom application.

I'd like to take a few moments for the benefit of the members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourselves when you are not speaking. Interpretation for those on Zoom is at the bottom of your screen, and you have the choice of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. All comments should be addressed through the chair.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of our meeting.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, June 20, 2022, the committee resumes its study of the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women globally.

It is now my great pleasure to welcome, from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt you. I want to have the floor for a moment before we introduce the witnesses, if I could.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes, please proceed.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

I am very excited that we are going ahead with this study. It's long overdue.

I also recognize that this is the last day before we have a two-week break, so I want to ask for a vote on the two motions that have been shared with my colleagues in both official languages. If you'd like, I can read them into the record, but I would like to get that out of the way so we can focus on the important work of SRHR.

I'll read the first one: “That the committee report—

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Go ahead, Ms. Bendayan.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

I am deeply committed to the studies that my colleague would like to raise. Frankly, I agree with them, but I cannot help but question the procedure of doing this at this point, while we have witnesses before us. This is not committee business. I'm not really sure that this is in order at this time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

I've been advised that she is very much in order, because she does have the floor. Also, she tabled this previously.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I want to point out that this was something that Mr. Bergeron did before our meeting at the last meeting. It is something that is a normal practice for this committee.

We could do this quite quickly. I think most people are in agreement with this.

The motion is this:

That the committee report the following to the House: The committee calls on the Government of Canada, without delay, to amend sections of the Criminal Code currently preventing Canadian humanitarian organizations from delivering aid in Afghanistan and similar contexts without fear of prosecution.

Mr. Chair, this has been something that the government has been promising for some time. I would like to see this come forward. I know that we brought this forward within the report for Pakistan, but I think it is something that all members of this committee would like to see the government move on.

We will be giving them two weeks to take this under advisement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Go ahead, Mr. Sarai.

[Randeep Sarai, Liberal, Surrey Centre, BC]

Mr. Chair, I move that we adjourn debate on these motions until the last 15 minutes of the meeting. That way we can go through the witnesses, and then we can discuss this in the last 15 minutes.

I have no problem with Ms. McPherson's motions, but I would like to move that we adjourn debate until the last 15 minutes, in light of the witnesses who are lined up.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Chair, Mr. Bergeron did this in the last meeting. I think this is something we could vote on quite quickly. I would rather do this now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We will put it to a vote.

The vote is on Mr. Sarai's motion to adjourn debate.

(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 4)

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

We'll resume our debate on the first motion that is before us.

Not seeing anyone, shall we put it to a vote?

The vote is on the motion by Ms. McPherson.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

I presume you would like to proceed to your second motion, Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

That is correct.

The second motion is as follows:

That the committee hold three meetings to study the current situation in Iran, including examining (i) the federal government’s refusal for listing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity, (ii) the connections between people or assets in Canada and the IRGC, and (iii) paths forward to support Iranian human rights activists, artists, journalists and other political refugees; that the committee invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs to testify as well as additional witnesses submitted by members of the committee; and that the committee report its findings back to the House and that, pursuant to Standing Order 109, the government table a comprehensive response to the report.

Again, I'd like to put that to a vote. I think we can all agree that this is an important study that needs to be done, considering the situation in Iran and the deteriorating situation of political prisoners.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

No one wants to speak to it, so we'll go to a vote.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0)

We will resume our committee hearing.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, June 20, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women globally.

It is now my pleasure to welcome, from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, Mr. Joshua Tabah, who is the director general of health and nutrition, and Ms. Tanya Trevors, who is the director of health and rights of women and girls.

Mr. Tabah, you will be provided a maximum of five minutes for your remarks, after which we will proceed to questions from the members. I will signal to you when you have only 30 seconds left, and I would be grateful if you could wrap it up in short order.

The same rule applies when we go to the members for questions. If there are only 30 seconds remaining for that particular slot, I will put this sign up.

Welcome to our committee, Mr. Tabah. You have five minutes.

[Joshua Tabah, Director General, Health and Nutrition, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, members.

We appreciate the opportunity and the invitation today to provide information on how Global Affairs Canada supports women's sexual and reproductive health and rights globally.

As my colleague, Assistant Deputy Minister Peter MacDougall, said at the committee's December meeting, Canada has committed to increasing its funding to an average of $1.4 billion per year by 2023‑24. It also committed to maintain this level of funding until 2030 to support the health and rights of women and girls around the world.

Of this total funding, $700 million is to promote global sexual and reproductive health and rights. The focus will be on areas of sexual and reproductive health and rights that are too often neglected by international donors.

These neglected areas include: first, family planning and contraception; second, safe and legal abortion services and post-abortion care; third, comprehensive sexuality education; fourth, health promotion activities and reproductive rights; and fifth, prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence.

This 10-year commitment to global health and rights is unprecedented in its scope and length for Global Affairs Canada, and it's something that Canadians should be particularly proud of because of how it builds on more than a decade of successful maternal and child health work, and because the need for global leadership on these issues remains acute.

Extensive input from Canadian and international experts and partners in 2016-17 during the development of Canada's feminist international assistance policy, combined with scientific and programmatic evidence outlined in the 2018 Guttmacher-Lancet Commission as well as other studies, reinforced how investments in comprehensive SRHR are critical for advancing sustainable development goals, promoting gender equality and ensuring economic prosperity. This evidence informed the development of the health and SRHR action areas of the feminist international assistance policy and the subsequent programming we have been undertaking since.

Canada is making good progress in meeting its existing commitments. In 2020‑2021, Canada contributed $489 million to support initiatives related to sexual and reproductive health and rights, or SRHR. This funding directly reached over 4.5 million people with sexual and reproductive health services in 29 countries.

I look forward to your questions and to sharing more about the work that Canada is undertaking in this space.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much.

We now proceed with questions from the members.

The first person will be MP Kramp-Neuman.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Good morning to both of you, and thank you for joining us here today.

As a mom—I have two young teenagers—this is certainly something that hits home for me. I'd like to speak specifically about our teenagers, who are growing up in a very different context than any generations have before. For example, we have smaller families. They are definitely much more digitally connected, and they are less likely to use contraception and also less likely to be married before the age of 18, so a lot has changed over the generations.

Conversations about menstrual hygiene and health, HIV, sexually transmitted infections and intimate partner violence are all very concerning. I'm thankful that I have a very open relationship and conversation with my children, but a lot of people do not.

What efforts or actions are needed to build on the progress and efforts that have been made over the last several years?

[Joshua Tabah]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to thank the member for an excellent question, a question that Tanya and I, who are both parents, also certainly ask as we raise our teenagers.

I can probably offer the most insight speaking about the international context. You are right that too often around the world youth and adolescents in developing countries don't receive adequate information both on their own rights, the right to bodily autonomy in particular, but also on sexuality and reproductive functions and services that they should have access to.

That's one of the reasons we are trying to take a comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights, such that we are adding to our significant portfolio of maternal and child health programming with a specific focus on adolescents to ensure that they get access to current information, both through the formal curricula in the schools they attend but also more broadly through social services being made available to them so they can use that information to properly exercise bodily autonomy.

Whether that is by seeking out contraception or making decisions about their future, it is something we consider fundamental, and we feel that the comprehensive approach we have taken for SRHR, which follows best practices as identified by the World Health Organization, is the best way for us to support that.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

Following up on that, I really believe it is important for adolescents to have a place at the table and in the conversations. Learning first-hand the appropriateness and the effectiveness from our teenagers and meaningfully involving them in the process is fundamentally important.

What barriers do you see that are currently happening in the progression of sexual and reproductive health?

[Joshua Tabah]

I think there is a growing awareness in the international assistance community, and more particularly in the global health and SRHR communities, about the leadership role that we want to ensure communities, and the persons we aim to serve, themselves play in the work that we do, whether it be programming or policy. That includes adolescents in particular, adolescent girls and adolescent boys.

In some of the initiatives we work with, we try to ensure not just a seat at the table but really an active and direct participation by youth representatives. I have the great privilege of working with an organization called the Global Financing Facility, which is a World Bank mechanism that ensures effective primary health services and comprehensive SRHR in 32 countries. We've worked to ensure not just a youth voice at the table, but an active role in the governance of the mechanisms such that the youth representative has an equal voice and vote to other donors or affected communities themselves. A youth representative will sit with me as a donor representative, along with ministers of health, and really be equipped to occupy that space.

We also ensure that the youth delegates are provided with any additional support that they require before the meeting so that they are able to be prepared and conversant on the topics. Sometimes our counterpart ministers of health can get swept away a little bit with dialogue. It's important to level the playing field to make sure that everyone is able to engage meaningfully in a way that's consequential as well.

That's just one example, but I think it shows that from the top, in terms of global governance of an international health institution, right down to the community level, we are making every effort to increase the local participation and direction that we receive for the efforts we make.

Global Affairs only provides international assistance for global health and SRHR that supports local priorities. Increasingly, we want to make sure that those local priorities are shaped not just by national governments but also by subnational and community voices, including youth.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Excellent. Thank you.

Could you speak a bit more specifically to the HIV infections and what can be done to prevent those among our adolescents?

[Joshua Tabah]

It's an excellent question.

The only segment of the population where we are not seeing the reductions in HIV transmissions that we expect is adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa. It's a particularly vulnerable group. Obviously, this is intimately tied to broader questions of bodily autonomy and gender equality.

Our primary partner for work on HIV is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. I have the great privilege to serve as a board member on that organization. We are really ensuring that, from a top-down perspective, this specific segment becomes a much greater focus for the Global Fund's HIV efforts. It's fantastic that the Global Fund is able to ensure that all countries in sub-Saharan Africa have access to the ART treatments that everyone requires to be able to manage the infection. But we're really going to scale up the attention to prevention with adolescent girls over this coming strategy cycle.

I was recently in Ghana, and I spent time with the Global Fund. I was very impressed, working with nurses, doctors and community health workers, by how they respond to people with HIV infections very well, getting those case levels right down to zero so there isn't further transmission. But where there is an opportunity for more is on the prevention side. It's directly related to bodily autonomy, because an adolescent girl has to be able to choose who her partners are. She has to have effective systems to prevent and address the incidence of SGBV that she could be subject to. Without protection for bodily autonomy, it becomes very difficult to ensure that she is able to protect herself from HIV transmissions in the way that we would want.

Mr. Chair, the honourable member is pointing to an area of very high priority for me personally and for the department over the coming years.